Forty years ago this week, my father took me and my brother Darren on the biggest trip of our growing up years. Especially since I was just five and Darren was only seven. We went to see our extended Collins clan in Georgia, spread between Atlanta and Harrison, the latter a small town of ex-farms in the east central portion of the state. Macon is the nearest city, with Augusta about ninety minutes away.

It was paid for courtesy of my Mom, who likely did it to give herself a vacation from Jimme’s weekly drinking, days-on-end-abandonment, followed by verbal abuse and threats. And the occasional physical fight, as the month before, after a July 4th party Mom threw, my father came in late, became jealous, and went after her with a meat cutting knife, only to end up stabbed in the torso and leg. All with the Mount Vernon police coming over to 425 South Sixth, and, upon finding Jimme in the stairwell suffering from his wounds, began laughing hysterically (more on that at a later date). I’m sure that Mom needed a break from Darren and me as well.

We went down to the city via Metro-North, took the Shuttle (in all likelihood) to Penn Station, and then the Amtrak to Atlanta. I don’t remember much of the trip itself. It was an overnight affair, and Mom had bought us overnight tickets, enabling us to sleep on cots or small beds, I guess. I do remember us pulling out of Washington, DC and seeing the Capitol from a distance after crossing into Virginia.

Known as the 750, it was donated to the Atlanta Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in 1962, and operated through the 1980s (likely the train that scared me in 1975), August 15, 2015. (http://www.steamlocomotive.com/nc-ga/sa750.jpg).

Then, after seemingly endless forests and nothing to do but sleep or watch my father sleep, we pulled into Atlanta sometime the next morning. After getting off the Amtrak and watching it depart, an old smokestack steam pulled in, blowing its whistle as loud as anything I’d ever heard. I practically jumped out of my skin, prompting some White guy who worked on the tracks to tell me, “That’s okay, that’s just ol’ [?] blowin’ off steam.” I didn’t much like the White guy, either.

Our Uncle McKinley and one of our older cousins picked us up from the train station, drove us around West Atlanta, and then down to the family farm in Harrison. Along the way, we stopped at my cousin’s job at Burger King for Whoppers. Except they got me the Whopper Jr, which didn’t make me too happy. But then I got to ride in the front of my uncle’s ’73 green Chevy Impala, with all of its chrome and tan leather seats.

We got there late in the afternoon, but mostly what I remember was the smell of the rural area. I’d never been to a farm before, much less one that was still somewhat in operation. The next couple of days were the most memorable part of the Georgia visit for me. The first morning on the farm, I woke up, washed up, and stumbling into the dining area and kitchen, which seemed so vast. Wood paneling, rich dark colors and the strong smell of Maxwell House coffee were what penetrated my five-year-old mind that morning. I remember sitting on my grandfather Fucious’ lap while he asked me a few questions. Then he gave me this syrupy yet somewhat crisp and doughy glazed donut to eat. My grandfather was eating one of his own, to go with his strong and sugarless cup of coffee. It wasn’t as good as the Clover Donuts donuts I’d eaten, but this first experience with Krispy Kreme was pretty good. Darren had a jelly donut, with the jelly all around the corners of his mouth.

They tried to take us horseback riding, my grandmother Imogene and my Aunts Christene and Charity. It worked fine for Darren, but for me, not so much. The whinnying of the horse scared me, and when they lifted me up to put me on the saddle, I started to cry. My grandmother hugged me, and told me that it would be okay. Then, they grabbed one of the sows and let me ride on her for what was probably ten minutes, taking a couple of pictures and laughing at the same time.

A beat-up version of the 1975 Chevy Impala my uncle McKinley bought in August 1975, August 15, 2015. (http://www.dvap.com).

A couple of nights later, I remember waking up in the middle of the night. There had been an accident involving my father, my cousin and my Uncle McKinley, and the green Impala was no more. Despite not wearing their seat belts, all three came out of the accident more or less unscathed. The next to last day of our time on the Collins family farm, my uncle drove up in a ’75 Chevy Impala, cream-colored and even more impressive.

It was a good trip, meeting my country-strange family, and the longest trip I’d go on until ’92, when I went to DC to visit a former high school classmate. it was also a welcome break from the constant fighting between Mom and Jimme.

My son, thankfully, has been going on trips since before his first birthday, although the flight he’ll take next week will be on his own, with his aunt meeting him at the destination gate.

Ballston high-rise (on right), Arlington, VA, where I stayed with "V" and her roommate during first DC area visit, June 26, 2008. (http://therealestatedirt.com).

I’ve lived in the DC area now for nearly thirteen years, but it was this time two decades ago that I came to the DC area for the first time. This was my first vacation ever as an adult, and the first time I’d gone on a vacation of any kind since my mother took me and my older brother Darren on a day trip to Amish country in Pennsylvania at the end of third grade, in June ’78. The visit had as many layers to it as a Vidalia onion, as it involved my past, present and future, and all at once.

At the center of my visit was spending time with my Humanities classmate and friend “V,” the valedictorian of Mount Vernon High School’s Class of ’87. I crashed at her and her roommate’s place in the Ballston section of Arlington, Virginia for a week during my spring break in March ’92. As I said in a previous post (see my “A Friendship Changing Lanes” post from October ’11), I’m not sure how our acquaintanceship ever became a friendship. Somewhere between having circumstances in which our fathers weren’t around consistently, or at least being able to relate to Billy Joel, or both of us scoring “5”s on the AP US History exam.

The fact that we went our respective ways, to Pitt and Johns Hopkins, helped. The fact that we wrote each other about some of our social triumphs and challenges helped more. Most importantly, it helped a lot that we both were more honest about our family troubles. Everything from my mother’s need to divorce my idiot ex-stepfather and the issues with my younger siblings to V’s mother’s health issues and her struggling with burnout trying to watch over her family while going to school. So, by the time I began my second semester of grad school, we’d become fairly close.

I hadn’t seen V since the day before New Years Eve ’88, the last Friday of that year. I hadn’t planned to visit V at the start of the year, but by the middle of February, I needed a break from Pitt and graduate school (see my “Paula Baker and The 4.0 Aftermath” post from January ’12). As I knew that I was two months away from finishing my master’s, I had begun to check out some alternatives to doing my history PhD at Pitt.

Key Bridge, connecting Georgetown area with Rosslyn section of Arlington, VA, at sunset (picture taken from west), September 18, 2008. (Jersey JJ via Flickr.com). In public domain.

Through Dr. Transatlantic Studies himself, Marcus Rediker — he was a Georgetown University history professor who somehow had been given an empty office in Pitt’s history department — I made arrangements to do some informational interviews at Georgetown during my early March spring break.

As soon as I told V of my opportunity to check out Georgetown, she offered me a place to stay for the week. I made arrangements through a couple of friends driving to Virginia to have them drop me at V’s that first Saturday in March.

The trip was a whole series of firsts and seconds for me. I rode Metrorail for the first time, went to Capitol Hill for the first time, and visited Howard University for the first time. I also spent one full day hanging out with V at Suitland High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where she was a first-year math teacher. Other than a couple of rowdy students, V was a very good teacher, and not just for a rookie.

My meeting at Georgetown went pretty well also. I managed to get a sweatshirt out of the deal, one that I still wear to this day. Aside from that, finding out from a then second-year grad student (and now and associate professor in African American history at Georgetown) that his annual stipend was only $7,500 a year in expensive DC made my decision for me. I decided that despite the name recognition, Georgetown wouldn’t be where I’d earn a PhD.

I also visited with V’s sister and mother toward the end of that week. V’s sister was in the process of transferring to Goucher, a far cry from the rising high school freshman I’d last seen a week before my freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh. V’s mother seemed happier in Virginia than in New York, but medically speaking, she had gotten worse since ’87. Her speech was slower and more slurred, and her upper body motions were even more limited than I last remembered. It was a reminder that as much as things had gone well for V over the years, she also faced the intense pressure of trying to care for a slowing dying mother and her sister, and all at twenty-two years old.

What I came away with from that week as my friends picked me up the following Saturday afternoon were two things. One, that I really liked being in an area with great diversity, with Whites, Blacks, Latinos and Asians from all walks of life, but without the rude chaos and energy that was and remains New York. Two, that V and I had truly become friends, as adults in our twenties, mostly unattached from how we saw each other when we were in Humanities and high school.

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